I think that voting has the effect to make you feel that you are doing something to change things, but if you didn't have that ritual maybe you will feel that there is no way out of your problems without actually doing something (PoW).
Also, I find it that voting has a really tight grip with people that whant things right now. There is an implicit idea that if "people chooses right, problems will be solver real fast". And this relates with the fact that people delegates responsability in others, who kind of are selected to be messianic in nature if they really believe they can fix all the problems of a country.
At the same time, the whole democracy idea reminds me in a sense of the jail in "The dark knight rises", where the whole idea of the pit is to give people hope (of climbing to freedom, fast and easy) just to make their punishment worst. Maybe if they had not that fake exit they would have worked to make a real one.
For me is:
Vote: PoS, high time preference, messianic delusion.
No, even thought here is "mandatory"
For me is: